Welcome to the home of SwiftCraftyMonkey Formulating Inc.! Join Susan as she obsesses about cosmetic chemistry and other things (some possibly related to monkeys)! Here you’ll find over 5,000 posts and formulas written over the past 16 years for everything from lotions, creams, and body butters to hair care products to fancy facial products filled with actives and cosmeceuticals! Enjoy the site without distractions – no ads, pop ups, sponsored posts, affiliate links, “one weird tricks” – all supported by readers like you.
How fabulous is that? If you want to take a peek, you can find the Back to Basics e-book here, the Lotion Making 101 e-book here, and the Formulating Lotions & Creams e-book here. I’m so excited! Woo! Just so you know, every penny I raise from any source offering the e-books – Lotioncrafter, Voyageur...
DOES WILLOW BARK EXTRACT NEED A LOWER pH?In this post on white willow bark, Heela asks: I wonder if this needs to be in a product that has a pH between 3-4 like traditional salicylic acid? Also, if it is in a higher pH formulation, does the salicylic acid become neutralized or can you drop the...
In this post on Ritathix DOE, Kate noted: PEG compounds are excluded from ECOcert so I’m not sure how this could be claimed as natural. (Click on the label to embiggen if you want to read the entire list properly.) I’ve said this before…I don’t know what natural means any more. There isn’t a definition...
I introduced you to Ritathix DOE yesterday, a new liquid thickener we can add to surfactant based products like body wash, shampoo, or other lathery and foamy things, so I thought I’d show you a little video I made about it today. I thought I’d thicken up the body wash I formulated for really oily...
As I mentioned in this Weekend Wonderings post, I bought Ritathix DOE, a thickener for surfactant based products and I thought I’d give it a try. Let’s take a look at this thickener in this post, then look at how I use it to thicken things in tomorrow’s post. Then we’ll compare it to Crothix...